Thursday, 19 November 2009

Writing

I'm going to start blogging more about writing. I'm sorry about that for some of you, to whom it will possibly be irrelevant bibble, but I guess this blog was always about what interested and amused me and I've actually been missing out on quite a large chunk of what I'm made up of by not doing more about the old nasty book habit.

The hardest thing I find about writing fiction is not the plotlines or characterisation or any of the other technical gumpf that goes into it. And it's not the 100,000 words or so that some people seem to find a challenge. I always reckon if you're counting words, you're missing the point, like the many people I see talking about NaNoWriMo* getting all breathless with comments like "Up to 12,000 words now! If only I could crack off another 2,000 today!"

Believe me, I know how easy it is to churn out words and then find that all you've done is filled pages with words. Filling pages with words is a doddle. The trick is which words.

The hardest thing for me about writing books is getting my head back into reality. There I am in a South London cemetery, the smell of wet leaf-mould in my nostrils and the wet grass soaking the legs of my trousers and someone pops up and wants to talk about the price of cabbages or the weather. Or I'm in a dingy hotel room with a prostitute and someone is beeping me to move over for them.

It's not just a problem that happens when 're typing, either, the whole barrier that separates fantasy and reality gets thinner as you spend more and more of your waking time living the odd lives of your characters, poring over their situations and experiencing the smells, sights and sounds that surround them.

I suppose you'd have to own to the possibility that you might not come back one day. But being dragged back to reality when you're writing, even in your head, is always like being woken in the middle of great dream.

And by the way, no, truth is stranger than fiction... It's always a bump to come back.

* November is Novel Writing Month. The idea is to write a book, if you were ever going to do it, now being the time to do it. I recommend writing books as a leisure activity. It improves the digestion.

I had the same thought last night regarding word count. As I closed my eyes on the day I wondered about how many words I'd written. Then I thought, who cares, and rolled over. Because it, as you point out, is not about volume. I'll have written maybe 250k by the time this book is finished and of those only around 85 will be published. I need to write those extraneous words to see if they work or not, or shed some light on or help me understand my characters better. When it's all working, you just know, you don't need to count the rpm's.

Yes, I know what you mean about the number of words being put in perspective. However, I guess you do need some. I once had an idea about publishing a book with a title but no other words, and inviting the reader to add their own.

I didn't, because anyone I mentioned it to said I was barmy!

So I wonder where the balance lies between no words and 250,000 words - it probably does matter a bit.

Chris WarrenAuthor and Freelance WriterRandolph's Challenge Book One - The Pendulum Swings (140,000 words - who said that!!??)

I don't advocate no word count. Every few days I check mine because you do need to keep an eye on your main mss and, for my genre, bring the story in by 85k, but I don't compulsively check at the end of each day and measure my success by the word count. I think it's a bit like cooking, after awhile you get a feel for length and structure, as you do for making a cake or whatever. The more you do it the more you rely on instinct and experience.

Thankfully, Alex, I have crossed to the other side and just kept a shoe lace in the real world. It positively sucks often when I am confronted and constantly dragged for a brief moment of time to the real world, though.

Indeed, our brains live a better life than our bodies do. Ironically, things written a century ago, like Huxley's Brave New World, created today's reality.

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Fake Plastic Souks

I write books, I consult on publishing, media and digital communications, I cook. I spend quite a lot of my time laughing and do try not to be a stick-waving, spittle-flecked angry old man. I fail in this occasionally.